Sculpture & Animation
VSU faculty are using 3D printers and digital modeling to apply precision and technology to practices thousands of years older than the computers used by students.
Hollis Barnett uses a three-dimensional scanner in his animation courses to convert clay characters created by his students to digital form. He takes it a step further by using motion capture technology to digitally animate the characters.
Inversely, students can print three-dimensional, tactile replicas of any digitally created characters. They even have the option to create bronze or aluminum versions of their designs.
Barnett is using three-dimensional printing in his sculpture courses to put a new spin on a technique that is 5,000 years old — lost wax casting. This method involves creating a wax sculpture, engulfing the sculpture in a firm material, melting the wax away, and then pouring molten bronze or aluminum into the cavity where the wax used to be. Once the outer mold is taken away, the final sculpture is revealed.
Barnett said he is enhancing the process by replacing the wax with creations from the three-dimensional, the plastic of which melts at the same temperature as wax. This allows for ultra precise designs that are difficult for human hands to sculpt.
“It’s a new way of coming up with tools,” Barnett said. “Every time you give artists a new tool, it never really completely replaces anything else. It just broadens what they’re able to do.”
Three-dimensional printers are also being used in interior design to create small models of rooms, and a laser cutter is being used in the woodshop to engrave wood, metal, and glass.
Hollis Barnett
“It seems like there are always some individuals who, when they see new technology, they’re afraid of it, or they think that it’s going to replace what they do and that they will become obsolete, but if you embrace new technology, all of a sudden it opens possibilities that you haven’t seen before.”
Ceramics
Over in ceramics, a craft that dates to prehistoric times, Mark Errol, lecturer of art, is using a three-dimensional printer that prints in clay. The printer is very advanced and can print in almost anything — even substances such as gingerbread or meatloaf, Barnett said.
“It’s like the Rolls-Royce of printers,” Errol said.
Ceramics students can design forms digitally and print them. This allows for intricate details, extrusions, and forms that are not common in ceramics, Errol said.
“We’re trying to incorporate the idea that it’s not a way to make pottery but that it’s a tool to use within the complex of their form,” Errol said. “In the world that our students are walking into as artists, you can’t be just one thing. You need to have a vocabulary of a plethora of items and materials so that you can be challenged and challenge the status quo with those things.”